Could Our Entire Reality Be Part of a Simulation Created by Some Other Beings? (gizmodo.com.au) 203
Sam Baron, associate professor at Australian Catholic University, focuses on the connection between key topics in the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of time concerning temporal ontology.
In a recent article in Gizmodo, he answers the ultimate question: Could our entire reality be part of a simulation created by some other beings? Let's assume these extraterrestrial beings have a computer on which our universe is being "simulated". Simulated worlds are pretend worlds — a bit like the worlds on Minecraft or Fortnite, which are both simulations created by us. If we think about it like this, it also helps to suppose these "beings" are similar to us. They'd have to at least understand us to be able to simulate us. By narrowing the question down, we're now asking: is it possible we're living in a computer simulation run by beings like us? University of Oxford professor Nick Bostrom has thought a lot about this exact question. And he argues the answer is "yes". Not only does Bostrom think it's possible, he thinks there's a decent probability it's true...
According to Bostrom, if these simulated people (who are so much like us) don't realise they're in a simulation, then it's possible you and I are too. Suppose I guess we're not in a simulation and you guess we are. Who guessed best? Let's say there is just one "real" past. But these futuristic beings are also running many simulations of the past — different versions they made up. They could be running any number of simulations (it doesn't change the point Bostrom is trying to make) — but let's go with 200,000. Our guessing-game then is a bit like rolling a die with 200,000 sides. When I guess we are not simulated, I'm betting the die will be a specific number (let's make it 2), because there can only be one possible reality in which we're not simulated.
This means in every other scenario we are simulated, which is what you guessed. That's like betting the die will roll anything other than 2. So your bet is a far better one.
Professor Baron notes there's also two factors that decrease the likelihood of this hypothesis:
In a recent article in Gizmodo, he answers the ultimate question: Could our entire reality be part of a simulation created by some other beings? Let's assume these extraterrestrial beings have a computer on which our universe is being "simulated". Simulated worlds are pretend worlds — a bit like the worlds on Minecraft or Fortnite, which are both simulations created by us. If we think about it like this, it also helps to suppose these "beings" are similar to us. They'd have to at least understand us to be able to simulate us. By narrowing the question down, we're now asking: is it possible we're living in a computer simulation run by beings like us? University of Oxford professor Nick Bostrom has thought a lot about this exact question. And he argues the answer is "yes". Not only does Bostrom think it's possible, he thinks there's a decent probability it's true...
According to Bostrom, if these simulated people (who are so much like us) don't realise they're in a simulation, then it's possible you and I are too. Suppose I guess we're not in a simulation and you guess we are. Who guessed best? Let's say there is just one "real" past. But these futuristic beings are also running many simulations of the past — different versions they made up. They could be running any number of simulations (it doesn't change the point Bostrom is trying to make) — but let's go with 200,000. Our guessing-game then is a bit like rolling a die with 200,000 sides. When I guess we are not simulated, I'm betting the die will be a specific number (let's make it 2), because there can only be one possible reality in which we're not simulated.
This means in every other scenario we are simulated, which is what you guessed. That's like betting the die will roll anything other than 2. So your bet is a far better one.
Professor Baron notes there's also two factors that decrease the likelihood of this hypothesis:
- How likely is it there are beings so advanced they can run simulations with people who are "conscious" like us in the first place?
- How likely is it such beings would run simulations even if they could? Maybe they have no interest in doing this.
"Sadly, we don't have enough evidence to help us decide."
Gizmodo doesn't indicate that professor Baron's came from a 9-year-old (as part of a series called "Curious Kids".) The 9-year-old's original wording of the question:
"Is it possible the whole observable universe is just a thing kept in a container, in a room where there are some other extraterrestrial beings much bigger than us?"
This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't say that it doesn't belong because it's bullshit. It doesn't belong because it's not news, much less a novel idea. This idea, or something like it, has long been accepted by philosophers/scientists as being a possibility. There are many things that are possible that we have no evidence for, yet no way to falsify. But we have to make certain assumptions when developing a concept of reality, and it does not help to work under the assumption that theories such as these are true.
Anyway, it's basically just the concept behind The Matrix.
Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:2)
Guess they never saw Men in Black II.
Or read any pulp sci fi from the golden age of sci fi.
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Or The Thirteenth Floor, which I always thought was better than The Matrix. There just weren't a bunch of silly, I mean cool, special effects.
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Shallow thinking scientist. Why not the universe itself created as a simulation, the entire universe, not a simulation in a jar but the entire universe in space and time but then it could all be unreal and it is all just inside your head in a jar and what is perceive is the simulation and what you thought you had perceived just an memory program uploaded a second ago, a second ago, a second ago, update completed.
Accept reality as reality or accept delusion as delusion, your choice.
Re:More like Rick and Morty (Score:4, Insightful)
In The Matrix, the simulation is in people's head, not their universe itself.
It's all the same thing. It's actually older than any of our sci-fi stories. If you look at the Hindu concept of the Maya, where all reality is an illusion, or Plato's "The Cave." Whether it's in our head or we are part of a larger, physical simulation, makes no difference. The problem is the same.
Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:2, Flamebait)
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It's not bullshit.
The question is, is it possible to simulate the universe from the point of view of a single planet. Given unlimited computer power. If so then many intelligent beings may be doing this. So the true reality may be a 1 in 1 billion chance.
Therefore, the odds are we really are in a simulation.
Why are you conscience or a sentient being? Thru programming or natural selection?
We don't know, but it is not bullshit.
Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:2)
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Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Substitute very large amount for unlimited.
Keep in mind, if we are in a simulation, our idea of what's possible might be tightly constrained by the limits of the simulation rather than the real world it's running in (which could be several layers of simulation deep for all we know.
Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no such thing as unlimited power, so no, it's bs.
What does that even mean? If this is a simulation then there actually could be unlimited power, and that we haven't discovered it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The problem with this whole simulation idea is the same as it's ever been. Sure, there's circumstantial evidence that lends it credence, like the way things behave differently at very high or low energy states, and how observation seems to affect outcomes — that looks a lot like different physics models are being used to model different conditions only as needed to preserve CPU time. But that's not the only explanation, and until we find some conditions where the simulation breaks down we won't have any real evidence that's what it is. And even THEN there might be some other explanation. But until we learn to break the simulation, suggesting that it might be one is pure mental masturbation. Without testable predictions there's no science, only thought experiments.
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So this is all of course baseless speculation with no way to falsify, so it's not so much science as it is philosophy.
All that said to have fun with the philosophy, it isn't even necessarily as hard as you make it sound.
For one, the common assumption would be that the 'true' reality is roughly like our own in terms of how complex it is and how complex computers could be. Say hypothetically a computer simulation we made was self aware. They may study their universe and conclude that a triangle is a fundament
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No. There would be telltale signs if we were in a simulation.
To be a simulation -- a model -- something must by definition be incomplete, otherwise it would not be a simulation; it would be reality. You don't put a bunch of plants in the ground and say you're simulating a garden, for example. Rather, you have created a garden.
Since physics is the phenomenon which underlies all else in our universe, then we would have to be in a simulation of physics. That means we would expect to see limits of precision
Re: This doesn't belong on Slashdot (Score:3)
That makes no sense. A simulation of something might be incomplete compared to that something, but it is complete in the sense that it has a ruleset it follows and can be glitch free in respect to that ruleset. If we live in somebody's computer program, our world would be defined by the rules of the program and there might not be a telltale sign - in fact any glitch would be a law of nature for us. It depends on the specifics of course.
Personally I find the question mildly interesting, but don't really care
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Why don't we apply our critical thinking to work on the philosophical conundrum of sunflowers and their marital status?
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It's not bullshit. The question is, is it possible to simulate the universe from the point of view of a single planet. Given unlimited computer power. If so then many intelligent beings may be doing this. So the true reality may be a 1 in 1 billion chance. Therefore, the odds are we really are in a simulation. Why are you conscience or a sentient being? Thru programming or natural selection? We don't know, but it is not bullshit.
There's no way to know if you are only programmed to /think/ you're conscious.
/And as far as astronomical computer resources are concerned: don't forget that a simulations don't have to run in real time -- a simulated person would never know the difference if it takes a millennium to render each 'frame'.
//And it may have been turned on a fraction of a second ago, will all past events and 'history' programmed in from its inception as launch parameters.
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Given unlimited computer power.
Unlimited computing power violates the laws of physics, so you can't just throw that in and expect a valid conclusion.
I think it IS bullshit (Score:2)
It only looks like it's a 1 in a billion chance we're not simulated... as long as you say "Let's assume..."
The problem is you start with the assumption there are all these higher level simulations running. In actuality, we have a sample size of 1 (reality), and no determination of its status.
Furthermore, this kind of self flagellation raises the obvious point that the existence containing the computer on which we were being simulated would probably ALSO merely a simulation because the same logic would appl
Re:This does belong on Slashdot (Score:3)
Yea, it does belong here. This is what Slapdash is about. Stuff that matters is important most of the time. Flights of fancy are important, too. Interesting question and a few takes on that are interesting to the nerd in me. Twere I able, I'd vote you down. Instead I'll try to nullify your comment with mine...
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Nobody remembers what "idle" is for?
Or is this because Google hates URL's now?
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Weird sci-fi belongs on Slashdot.
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See the thing is:
- There is no evidence that we "exist" other than other people acknowledging our presence.
The reason it could be reasoned that we're in a simulation is the same for people who believe in a higher power (eg god, aliens, etc), as far as we know there's no proof that we're not in a simulation any more than there is no proof a god exists. You're supposed to ask for proof, not go "the lack of proof, proves X"
Like to some people, it's easier to accept that there is some kind of existence beyond o
Why not ask how many angels... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can dance on the head of a pin?
Perhaps he also wants to discuss "quantum immortality"?
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Questions About Angels
BY BILLY COLLINS
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.
Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and
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How many Ace of Angels members can dance on the back of a stack of turtles, that's what I want to know!
I'm hoping they can at least fit Seolhyun, Hyejeong, and Yuna.
It's gonna be the best music video in the whole galaxy!
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Why waste time on that shit?
Let's discuss quantum reality as juxtaposed against the subtext of bitcoinized blockchain in a cloudy condensation of leveraged interactive deliverables.
Nice (Score:2)
That's a win-win, right there.
Horton? (Score:4, Funny)
Can we shout "We are here" loud enough for the elephant to hear us? If so should we?
Yes (Score:2)
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Takes less horsepower than one imagines... (Score:4, Insightful)
...because they don't have to simulate everybody's everything, they just have to simulate (for example) my view of everything.
Plenty of the universe is hidden for me, and roughly 7,999,999,999 other earth-bound viewpoints are as well. I'm all alone in my head.
What I'm getting at is that if we're dubious about the reality of our experience, then I necessarily must be dubious about the reality of others and everything outside of myself.
If everyone and everything is a simulation, and I should believe it so, then why should I not believe it's all simulated for my point of view?
Any evidence I see to the contrary would be a simulation, and thus questionable.
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Ah, yes.
I'm not sure that this deserved such a serious response, but thank you for at least starting from the Law of Identify, as the ancients would have. Without that, you can't get anywhere but in a circle.
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In your theory, his 'odds are' statement is incorrect. Because in your theory, a randomly select person taken from the people that created your simulation and the SINGLE person in the simulation has at most a 50% chance, and honestly, most likely a 1 in a 8 billion chance of selecting the single simulation that exists instead of the 8 billion real people
Re: Takes less horsepower than one imagines... (Score:2)
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No, me!
Or is it No me?
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No, it is the guy you replied to.
warcraft? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Arguably, the ability to program math, quantum mechanics and evolution are simply on the backlog in the "outside" universe, not implemented in our simulated universe - simply capabilities we're not given, and not allowed to be aware of.
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WGAS (Score:2)
Because we exist to ponder the question... (Score:2)
"How likely is it such beings would run simulations even if they could? Maybe they have no interest in doing this."
Silly idea to suppose they may have no interest in "doing this" when we are hear pondering this question. Of they had no interest we wouldn't be here.
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I can think of two reasons, rather quickly, so that implies someone with a greater imagination and more time could come up with additional valid premises.
1) Entertainment: Many of our currently most popular simulations are for gaming... primarily designed to take us out our boring present into a world designed to distract and entertain.
2) Species survival scenarios: The advanced society is threatened and plays out millions of possible futures with sentient doppleganger participants in hopes of a solution to
This nonsense again. (Score:3)
Look, the brain has evolved to always seek a "Why?".
Even when that stops making sense or becomes utterly useless.
It does not matter if you replace "big bang" with "God did it" or "it's a simulation". You're still stuck with "And what caused *that*?" You're stuck at square one.
In the end, the whole point of the scientific method is to focus on that which is useful and hence matters!
If you cannot tell the difference, it by definition does not exist, and hence does not matter. Being able to tell is how existence is *defined*.
So focus on something useful.
Or ... have fun with the Münchhausen trilemma.
And Güdel's incompleteness theoren
And the effects of fitting the universe into a Planck volume, aka uncertainty becoming infinite, causality vanishing as a result, and not existing and existing becomkng the same thing.
Sorry, ... brains are not made to handle this. At all.
Re: This nonsense again. (Score:2)
Gödel's incompleteneas theorem.
Sorry, it's 3AM here, and I manually entering HTML entities in 2020 is a bit silly.
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In the end, the whole point of the scientific method is to focus on that which is useful and hence matters!
If you cannot tell the difference, it by definition does not exist, and hence does not matter. Being able to tell is how existence is *defined*.
How many things were we not able to tell the difference between, until we could? That's the point of science. Find the difference, and then see if we can do something useful with it.
This idea is logically equivalent to... (Score:2)
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... Intelligent Design, and deserves roughly the same measure of skepticism.
Or maybe it's not that intelligent and our god is just some other advanced species' fourth grader playing mine craft.
Elementary (Score:2)
How likely is it there are beings so advanced they can run simulations with people who are "conscious" like us in the first place?
I considered that point, as well. However, it's not as difficult as it might seem, given I'm the only truly conscious entity in this simulation.
How likely is it such beings would run simulations even if they could? Maybe they have no interest in doing this.
Of course they would want to simulate me. Obviously!
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I'm the only truly conscious entity in this simulation.
No, it's just me actually, you are just some text on the screen in the simulation of me.
*Pointing my middle finger up at the sky* (Score:2)
*moves on to something that actually matters*
Beings like us? (Score:2)
Ha. Thus universe is a grade 7 science fair project by a being totally unlike us, who is trying to calculate the upper bound on lithium production in a simple class 3 universe.
We are just unnoticed byproducts of that.
I have proof that we're not (Score:2, Interesting)
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"a wall that's not textured from the other side": I remember the time when I discovered that the back side of my desk was not real wood, like the rest of the desk. I was maybe four years old.
It was the mice. (Score:2)
The mice created the simulation.
Don't need to worry, or at least until the dolphins leave.
Maybe it's just one being (Score:2)
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Yes, it is odd that no one thinks about the fact that the universe is God's simulation, in some sense of "simulation". I think that's true both from the Genesis viewpoint, and from the Red King's viewpoint in Through the Looking Glass.
I think the argument is incomplete. (Score:3)
It's fun to think about whether or not we're a simulation. The idea has a bit of a forbidden fruit kind of appeal to it. If it's true, then everything we thought we knew is wrong, and will have to be re-considered. I've heard the idea about the odds of being in a simulation are astronomically in favor of the simulation, but I'm thinking that there's a load of other factors involved that we're not accounting for. Bostrom touches on difficulty and desire as being potential complications, and that's a good start, but I might point out that if an event necessary to our existence is unlikely to occur, our very existence is evidence enough that the unlikely has occurred.
I've never heard anyone really speculate on the minutia of the simulation's nature though, and I think that we'll get better answers if we can sort out whether or not reality does behave like a simulation. There's quantum weirdness, sure, but while that might be evidence of a simulation that wasn't designed for us to examine things that small, it might also just be evidence that our understanding of it is incorrect.
I don't think I know enough to figure it out that way, but I do know that other people posting things with unique personalities and varied levels of coherence is evidence enough for me that all of this user-generated content isn't created procedurally. All of the characters in a book, no matter how well written, have some common elements to their personalities, as they're limited by the mind of the author. A good author will figure out what makes the character tick and write to that, but the tools he uses to get there are a finger print. I'm used to seeing different perspectives on the same subject from the Left and Right, both of which are internally consistent, and I will still manage to argue about it with either a liberal or a conservative, by coming out of nowhere with a completely different interpretation. It's not random, but the source information does get mangled. I think it's evidence enough that I'm not alone, talking to a bunch of bots. At the very least, we are all bots.
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If it's true, then everything we thought we knew is wrong, and will have to be re-considered.
Well even if it is true, we probably won't ever be able to know, so we won't be re-considering anything. If by some incredible turn of events the people hypothetically running the simulation and say 'yup, it's a simulation' in an undeniably clear way, well there's nothing to practically do to prepare for what we couldn't even imagine to come next, so still not much practical point in any of it, so it's just fun to think about.
I don't think I know enough to figure it out that way, but I do know that other people posting things with unique personalities and varied levels of coherence is evidence enough for me that all of this user-generated content isn't created procedurally.
Well, the volume of people posting things may be contributed by beings in that uni
Ethical considerations (Score:2)
The only way I can see this happening is if we simulated beings are considered to have minimal consciousness, like we view ants in our simulation. Therefore, our (simulated) pain and suffering is immaterial to the simulators.
Yes, we are in a simulation. Vedanta philosophy (Score:5, Informative)
Vedanta constantly talk about the "Illusion" (called maya) of everything material. There is Truth (called brahman) that can not be perceived as long as you trust your five senses. These senses can only see the illusion (maya) which is actually a shadow (called chaya) of the Truth.
They claim the illusion can fall as if it is a screen and you can perceive the Truth and you will attain liberation. Even births and deaths are illusions, and your eternal soul goes through these cycles again and again. The only way to escape this cycle is to see through the illusion, and realize the Truth.
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realize the Truth.
There is no spoon?
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Very similar to Plato's Allegory of the Cave [washington.edu], when he tried to explain his theory of Forms.
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The scene I am picturing is, th
quantum mechanics (Score:2)
There are aspects of quantum theory that would seem to support this. Like how some things can exist in superposition, an indeterminate state, until they are observed. That part of the simulation doesn't "run" until someone looks at it. It's speculated that this is a way of reducing the computational requirements. Only the parts that are in contact with an observer need to be computed.
It always seemed really weird and counterintuitive to me that something should physically change simply by me observing it...
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That part of the simulation doesn't "run" until someone looks at it.
An understandable but erroneous implication.
Too often in the literature, we use the words "observations," and "measurements."
Those don't mean what you think they mean.
Recall that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. "Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old ..." (wiki)
Quantum mechanics did just fine without humans looking at stuff.
When quantum fundamentalists use the words "observations," and "measurements," appreciate that anytime a quanta interacts with the universe, those are "ob
Philosophy??? (Score:2)
Goddam science fantasy.
I understand now (Score:2)
Previous Slashdot Bostrom Discussion (Score:3)
2014: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Mostly the same discussion.
The only new data is that we may be the AGI we fear.
We are sims (Score:2)
This is SimUniverse and the player keeps hitting the "random disaster button". Perhaps he passed out and a tentacle is laying on that key.
Simulations, parallel universes, string theory ... (Score:2)
... multiverses and God, along with TFA are all temporary placeholders for ignorance until we can do better.
Can't be (Score:2)
It would explain one thing (Score:2)
So far, we have yet to find evidence of any other beings in our universe. No electromagnetic or other signals from another planet, no spaceships cruising around our solar system, no material object (spacecraft or being) found on this planet or on any other planet or moon we have so far explored.
Does this mean there are no other beings capable of an advanced civilization in this universe? Of course not. Only that so far, we have found no evidence for such beings.
However, if we are in a simulation, perhaps
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We would not be able to receive EM communication from most the universe, not even from satellite galaxy of milky way. Intelligent life only need to be rare, say every million light-years.... and thus they never meet nor greet.
Reminder for billions of years life on this earth was single celled. That's the norm, and probably the norm for most places that have life at all.
Simulation, Intelligent Design, God/Creation? (Score:2)
It seems to me that all the people who want to believe that we're living in a simulation being run by some superior beings might as well go to church and believe in God. Same thing with Intelligent Design; if there was somebody else who "designed" us, then you believe in a supreme being, or "God".
So what? (Score:2)
This thing is a waste of synaptic connections:
1) It offers no insight to modify our behavior because of it. As in, even if we assumed it could be possibly true, what should WE do different? Nothing, as far as I can tell. We might as well go back to worshipping the Joo-Joo under the Baobab tree.
2) Did anyone try begging the simulators to reveal themselves? Well I just did, looked like a fool and got no response. So I'm gonna assume this isn't falsifiable, therefore it could be total bullshit.
Worse than so what -- it's a waste of time (Score:2)
I can't disprove that this is a simulation, because maybe it's just a very good simulation. And I can't prove it's a simulation for the same reasons. It's nothing more than a mental exercise that doesn't warrant more than a short essay of dubious entertainment value. An idea that is neither falsifiable nor verifiable is useless in the pursuit of knowledge.
Brain in a jar v2.0... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's all this is, and any professor of philosophy should know why that's a dead end.
There's good work that suggests that certain physical phenomena at the quantum would be NP complete to compute. And before you go "quantum computing", the best you can do is just have the exact same atoms as are in the universe interacting in the same timeframe, and that's, well, the universe and you are in the same place.
Re:Brain in a jar ... vs religion version 915834 (Score:2)
actually, it's just another version of God or gods, nothing more.
Yeah, it's just speculation with no practial use.. (Score:3)
... but an interesting enough diversion, if you don't go nuts and take it seriously.
First off, the supposed "real universe" in which the simulation of our reality runs... everybody seems to be assuming it's just like our universe, more or less. That does not follow. There's no reason that the outer universe would have any more similarity to our universe than our universe has to a Ms. Pac Man game.
There's the question of, if we're processes running on some sort of virtual machines, well, we have seen vulnerabilities in our own virtual machine code that has allowed processes to "break out" of the simulation and access and affect things that are supposed to be outside it's ability to access. (Nice SF bit that did this, the simulation of Michael Garibaldi in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", figured out he was a simulation, figured out how to break out of it, and used the outside computer to send a "Here they are!" message out to the enemies of the people messing with him in the simulation. "Whoops, I guess the system's busy...")
Then there's the issue of magic. It worked in the past? But not now? "Oh, crap, another hole. Save the state, halt the simulation, restart it after I get the patch in."
Assume the universe is a simulation. (Score:3)
It doesn't follow that the point of the simulation is to model *us*. We might just be a minor and irrelevant pattern that emerges very briefly in the course of the model run.
We occupy such a tiny fraction of the universe's volume it defies any meaningful estimation. The roughly 200000 years our species has existed is about a thousandth of 1% of the universe's age. Not only might the beings running the simulation be uninterested in us, it's conceivable they aren't even be aware of us.
So our occurrence in the simulation doesn't actually suggest the beings running the simulation are anything like us. The strongest suggestion of similarity is that whoever they are, they run simulations.
Barclay (Score:2)
Computer, End Program.
Not exactly a new concept (Score:3)
Every so often - or indeed, seemingly more frequently these days - old ideas are trotted out as being 'new'.
If we really wanted to get trite about this, this is an idea as old as time.
If 'God' created everything, then, effectively, 'God' is running a simulation - so, sure, this concept of a simulation, in a more abstract sense, is as old as religion itself.
Many religions believe 'God' is omnipotent - he can create seemingly out of nothing and also completely take away as if it never existed - just like someone running a simulation.
Heck, if we really wanted to start getting super deep about this, then imagine the entire universe actually being equivalent to a single atom, being one of billions making up an object that exists within ... another universe.
If we are a simulation, then it really makes no difference to us in the long run, does it?
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I don't see why that is an issue. The universe is already for all practical purposes infinitely large and complex, so why not times 100 or even 100,000.
Can someone pass me the bong again?
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The difference between 'all practical purposes' and reality:
When you download a deep fake video of Taylor Swift, that's all practical purposes.
When you actually date Taylor Swift, that's reality.
I.e., "all practical purposes" = not at all real, just barely passable to convince a fool
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I rather enjoyed pondering your theorem that the
outer box must be hundreds of times larger than ALL smaller boxes inside it,
but given her proclivity for new partners, perhaps dating Taylor Swift is not a rare enough instance to measure the likelihood of reality simulation.
Re:Boxes (Score:2)
Yes you can put a large box in a smaller one if you can make it smaller than the small box. Gotta think outside the boxes for this. Simplify the complexity and work back out from there. Break it into little pieces and the big box will fit..
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You can't put a larger box inside of a smaller box?
Haven't you seen Dr. Who's Tardis?
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The problem is complexity. Think of complexity like a box. You can't put a large box in a smaller box. Similarly, you can not put a more complex simulation in a less complex simulation. That is, while you can create a simulation on a 1996 computer, you can't simulate a 2020 computer on a 1996 computer because the 2020 computer has more memory and processor power than the 1996 one does.
Sure you can, because 'real time' from the point of view of the simulation doesn't have to match 'real time' as observed by the rest of the universe.
Given enough time, you could simulate the output of a 2020 CPU completely by hand using nothing but pen and paper. In the end it's still just boils down to a collection of a few billion interacting OR, AND, etc. gateways interacting to produce pre-determined responses. You can easily simulate a modern CPU on 1995 hardware - program in the design schematics
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The minimum box size is the box itself.
That is, the most efficient way to store all possible ongoing data on a set of particles is: To have an identical set of particles. Floor of the function.
Any other approach to handling the data has overhead, or is missing data.
That said, there's no rules on higher nest levels of existence/reality, so sure have your "what if it's all just a bauble" pothead moment. Whatever physics you want, states of matter, passage of time, numbers aren't numbers, they'll all equally i
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"you can't simulate a 2020 computer on a 1996 computer because the 2020 computer has more memory and processor power than the 1996 one does.": Wrong. You can (and people do) simulate a larger computer in a smaller one. It just runs a heck of a lot slower. For example, if the larger computer has more RAM, you simulate that (when you need to use that much RAM) with what amounts to swap space on a hard drive (or an SSD drive, these days). This is in fact exactly how next generation processor designs are te
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We are talking about some of the most simple rules of the universe, which means it is true of all possible universes that could conceive of us as a simulation.
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We are talking about some of the most simple rules of the universe, .
The most simple rules of our simulation perhaps. The actual Universe could be more complex or have completely different rules. If we were a simulation. How would we know what the 'outside rules' were?
Re:Bull. Not true at all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Our ability to conceptualize the rules of the universe are at best constrained by how we observe 'our' universe.
We cannot begin to precisely know the realities of a hypothetical higher order universe that would be simulating us, as we just have no way to observe such a hypothetical even if it did exist.
Scale it down to our world as a theory, a hypothetically self-aware simulation running in a game engine would think the 'most simple rules of the universe' to be much different than we think. They may think time is quantized at 30 times every second, or maybe time goes more granular, but they just can't measure it. They may consider the things they observe and extrapolate to the skybox, and come up with all kinds of crazy astro-physics theories to explain discrepancies between near observations and far observations. They may conceive of the humble triangle as the elementary particle. They would conclude they can't 'build a computer' fancy enough to simulate all those triangles, and to model what they presume to be a massive universe projected through skybox and game assets that masquerade as telescopes and such with textures projected onto lenses rather than actually refracting and such. They would have no way to ascertain that there is a universe simulating them, nor would they be able to extrapolate the finer grained time scales and subatomic particles that we think of. So too may a universe simulating us be taking shortcuts, and our inability to observe beyond a certain small scale is not a fundamental truth of all universes, but rather a limitation of their ability to simulate.
Anyway, multiple things are in play, whether it being a true reality being more complex than we can even imagine or our world being massively more simple than we think but fleshed out through lore or fake observations depending on the situation and whether they are simulating the world, a country, a city, or one single person's (yours) perspective.
There's nowhere practical to go with such thoughts, as they can't be proven/disproven nor is there reason to adjust your life according to such theories, but it's a fun philosophical thing to ponder.
Re: If so (Score:2)
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I'm with you, they must be fucking jerks. This reality is fucked. They seek the answer to why we'd continue destroying a planet when we damn well knew we were destroying a planet. Jerks.
And this is the most likely reason a more advanced {or even similarly advanced} civilization would be running millions of simulations with characters and environments much like their own... to find the rare, perhaps single, pathway to avoiding the destruction of their own world and civilization.
Strangely, perhaps 1 in 14,000,605